No-No Dieting

No-No Dieting

I have been on a diet for 12 years.

As I unpacked the move boxes marked ‘kitchen’, I was shocked, and really rather embarrassed actually, to find so many diet books. One by one, I pulled out the Atkins Diet, The South Beach Diet, The Hay Diet, The High Protein Diet, the Weightwatchers programme, You Are What You Eat, The Dukan diet and Paul McKenna’s self hypnosis weight loss book (panic buy).

Shelf of shame!

The most shocking and really rather embarrassing part of it, is that I weigh pretty much the same now as I did before I embarked on this seemingly pointless weightloss marathon. I realised I must have just gained and lost the same 14lb throughout half of my twenties & most of my thirties!

I exclude the year spent living in Sydney in my twenties when I spent all available food money on vodka, as it curbed my appetite, and I dropped 3 stone. Not a healthy option now I that have a baby, a husband and a job I am expected to turn up to.

any excuse to show the photo

possible side effect of the vodka diet

All the diets work, I definitely lost pounds, hundreds of them probably just in buying the blimmin’ books, but only the vodka diet really gave me the results I have been aiming for ever since, only back then I was too blind drunk to see it.

 So, I have made a decision.  I am never going on another fad diet again.

“Thank God for that” applauded my husband when I told him (I heart him).

Aside from Weightwatchers, when I lost 3 stone of baby weight in 7-months by making sensible food choices, it’s just not a healthy example to set to my child – don’t eat pasta, don’t eat bread, eat bread but not on the same day as meat, eat meat but not with root vegetables or peas.  Don’t eat fruit, eat unlimited fruit, eat only fruit before 12pm.  No caffeine or alcohol.  What the heck?!  My body was probably as confused as I was.

So that’s it and this is me… well, for now anyway… I still have to lose the weight of 17 Easter eggs first.  The no-diet diet will have to start tomorrow.

18 Comments

    • Grenglish
      Author
      May 3, 2011 / 7:32 PM

      haha, thanks!

  1. thomo
    May 3, 2011 / 10:45 PM

    SMUDGE! I LOVE YOU!

    • Grenglish
      Author
      May 4, 2011 / 4:59 AM

      you too T!

  2. Peter432
    May 4, 2011 / 1:12 AM

    Other side effects of the vodka diet include hand stands on old unsecured church pews …. wonder how that turns out?

    • Grenglish
      Author
      May 4, 2011 / 5:00 AM

      haha, funniest night ever! Shame there are no pics…

      • Hamish von Trapp
        May 4, 2011 / 9:10 AM

        Are you sure there are no pics??? 🙂

        • Grenglish
          Author
          May 4, 2011 / 9:32 AM

          I am quite sure, Hamish, thank you! Why… do you????

  3. Sarah Derrig
    May 4, 2011 / 7:27 AM

    Absolutely your best post yet!!! It’s so nice to know that what I’m thinking and saying to myself on a daily basis that there are other women out there saying the same thing!

    • Grenglish
      Author
      May 4, 2011 / 8:26 AM

      Thanks! I realised that I also only feel the need to chug 5 bags of minstrels after I’ve been on a diet for a few days!

  4. Noo
    May 4, 2011 / 7:16 PM

    Can you lend me the Dukan diet one? I really think I might need it – I am a hefer. Sorry Smudger but I’m so not as strong as you!!!! And I think you always look bloody fab anyway xxxx

    • Grenglish
      Author
      May 4, 2011 / 8:35 PM

      NOO! You have been my thinspiration! Surely you are not a hefer. I will lend you the book of course but it is mainly a meat diet… just fyi

  5. Helen Wills
    May 10, 2011 / 10:06 AM

    I am so with you on this! I have that many Weightwatchers cook books I could become a leader, but they are stacked well behind all my Nigella’s (much more delicious pictures). And anyway, as my 6 year old daughter once wrote in a mother’s day card, she would rather have a mum that makes ‘poodings’ (sic) than a mum that can fit into her old wedding dress (after all it needs to fit her more closely than me now that it lives in the dressing-up box!). Your post has made me so happy that I’m off to eat white toast with real butter 😉

    • Grenglish
      Author
      May 10, 2011 / 10:50 AM

      Haha, my Nigella books are on the shelf above the diet ones! Real butter is definitely the way forward… not sure what goes in the ones that are so easily spreadable…
      Your daughter seems to have her priorities spot on, well done!
      Sxx

  6. Sarah
    July 1, 2011 / 5:54 PM

    I wanna no-diet. My weight seems to stay the same regardless, that woul ve great if it was just about a stone and half lighter.

    It’s my relationship with food that’s the issue when I’m happy I eat whenI’m sad I eat.

    Something has gone well I deserve that doughnut, things gone badly I need that flake to cheer my up.

    • Grenglish
      Author
      July 2, 2011 / 6:53 AM

      I am exactly the same! It’s really hard to change habits but I am more accepting of who I am now and I doubt I’ll ever be thin again! So, just embracing the curves and trying to make sensible choices.

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